In this episode we chat with Flipper University member Jenny to learn how she and her husband made $50,000 in 14 months on eBay.
Check out our FREE Workshop: https://courses.fleamarketflipper.com/flipper-university-workshop-webinar
You can find us at: https://fleamarketflipper.com/
Your Money Summit: https://www.yourmoneysummit.com/
Reseller Hangout Podcast Episode 34 - Jenny Fyksen
Rob: What's up, guys? On today's episode, we are so excited to be talking to Jenny Fyksen she's a flipper alumni from Flipper University. So very, very excited, very grateful that she jumps on here. So we can do this interview with her today.
Melissa: Thanks for being here, Jenny.
Jenny: Yes. Thank you for having me.
Melissa: We're so excited to talk to you today. So before we dive in, what's your background and how'd you get started with flipping?
Jenny: Well, I guess I got started flipping, about four years ago. I had been, it was recently after the birth of our third child. I'm married and we have three kids and I had been working full time.
And I was just, I was kind of frazzled trying to like manage a household and kids, and I just felt like I wasn't doing anything justice. So I ended up quitting my job, which was a tough decision. And being down to one income was a little bit more challenging than we expected, even though my husband and I have always been kind of budget minded.
And so I started looking for things to do on the side. I did a little bit of childcare. When my, the kids were napping, I'd go through closets and I would find things just to sell locally. And I just found it fun. And I found selling things was a lot more fun than bringing other children to my household. Even though I loved with that, like, it was just, I kind of got a thrill out of finding things in our house, in our attic and the basement, whatever that had long, lost their usefulness to us and making some money on the side.
Rob: That's awesome. And we totally can relate. We have three kids as well. And yeah, that is when we went into it full time is the birth of our son.
Melissa: And that's what actually I did all the time, each time I had maternity leave, I didn't get maternity leave paid. So I would take off six weeks. I was a personal trainer.
I'd take off six weeks and I would just help you with flipping so we can make some extra money to kind of break that time was a little tight. So.
Rob: So that actually sends the question. So you said you started doing this, finding stuff out of the house. Were you doing it locally or are you doing it on eBay or where you're shipping stuff or not shipping stuff?
Jenny: Yeah, that's a good question. It was only locally, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace. And, as I found that I really kind of liked doing that. I, you know, and I found that, the names have changed throughout the years. At first I would call it purging. And so I would go through the closets and I would just find things to purge.
Oftentimes during the summer, my kids and I would do walks around the neighborhood. And there was one summer in particular where there were tons of houses for sale. And people, instead of like once they would close on the house, instead of like taking all the stuff that they didn't want to Goodwill, they started putting large piles of items at the side of the road.
And it was like a light bulb went off. So I started finding items. I sent my kids around the neighborhood, you know, cause my, my girls are a little bit older at the time. They were probably, around 10 and my oldest was around 10. I'd be like, get on your bike, see if any of the neighbors put out new stuff.
And I would like take some of their items and I would just resell it locally. And that's how I got started, for the first probably year or so. And then, and everything was local. I didn't ship anything. And then, my husband got involved and everything changed. My husband, when he gets excited about something, he is like, he has lots of energy and is a bit ADD and he was all in.
So he's getting excited about me reselling things and he's always had a love for like going to thrift sales and estate sales and things like that, just basically going through other people's junk. And so now he would go to these sales and he would find items for me to resell. Except the only problem was that my husband got so excited that he purchased very enthusiastically. And so I was like, so overwhelmed because I had just gone through all this purging in the house and then he'd come home with all of this treasure and he'd be like, okay, slow down. And he said, oh, we can make $20 here, $10 here. And sometimes he'd find things that would be a bit of a home run.
You know, I remember one item in particular. I think he bought for $5 and we sold for $200 and we were thrilled. As he would get more excited, we kind of needed to, I was seeing the need more and more to do things differently. Like we both loved it. We love doing it together. And we knew the types of items that he was finding we needed to sell on eBay because a lot of them were like vintage, collectible things, and we knew we would get more, selling on eBay and, that was kind of the very start to our eBay journey.
And we started on eBay maybe a month or two before we found you guys. ANd after that everything changed.
Rob: I love it. eBay is such a game changer, especially for resellers it's so cool what you're able to do, using eBay as a tool.
Melissa: Just get your stuff in front of so many more people than you can in the local market.
And a lot of people don't want to deal with shipping. So that helps. So we'll ship it anywhere. So that's awesome. Do you have, like you mentioned vintage stuff, do you have a kind of niche of items that you like, or do you just sell anything that will sell well?
Jenny: I do the typical Flea Market Flipper items.
So I do, you know, I do the sleep numbers. I do the cooktops, some ranges if I can find them locally, exercise equipment and that's kind of been my niche. And then we do freight as well. And that niche that my area is growing and growing the longer I'm the more, I'm a part of Flea Market Flippers, my husband gravitates towards anything that catches his eye.
And that is just a wide variety of different things. He looks for things that are well-made. He looks for things that are unique, and sometimes even a little bit bizarre. So the types of things that she gravitates for tend to be a bit unusual. He does everything from, military memorabilia, he'll even find some Navajo jewelry. Locally he's found, like unusual carnival type items at estate sales. He likes Coleman lanterns. It's anything that is well-made and interesting, and that covers a wide variety of different genres. So we sell a little bit of a lot.
Rob: That's awesome.
And he's in great company cause I'm the same way. So I I'm more gravitated towards the larger items though. The items that people like, what am I going to do with this? So, I totally relate to that. You know, finding those well-made items, those good, good items, and then trying to get them for sure. So I can definitely relate.
Melissa: Yeah. I did want to talk about something you said too earlier when you said, you know, you started to get overwhelmed with him getting the stuff. So you had to figure out something else, like to do something a little different and that's when you. offered the shipping and also it sounds like you've gravitated to some more higher profit items too.
So that is more, more of your time. You have more of your time because you're doing, you're taking the time to find those kinds of items for the most part.
Jenny: So exactly. And that's been a game changer when we started, when we first started doing this, we were happy to make $20 profit on an item. And then the more items my husband would pick up, the more overwhelmed I would get.
And then when we started following Flea Market Flippers, and we started hearing things like 10 times profit. And when we first heard that it was like what!
That's really, really hard, but the longer we've been a part of this group, we're finding that we can do that. Maybe not consistently with the vintage items, because vintage is a little bit harder. And we're still, my husband picks so many different items that sometimes you can't always find good comps when you're getting them.
But we have made some just incredible flips, because we know how to ship because we're asking, we're trying to get things at the lowest price possible or where we're not afraid to walk away. Where when we first started, we'd get attached to things emotionally, especially my husband, because he gets excited and he's like, look it up.
And he would come home with something that maybe he'd spend $100 on. You're like, whoa, that might not be worth a whole lot more than $100. It's really cool. I don't know how many more other people will think. It's really cool and want to pay him more money, but we'll see. So it's been, it's been learning the concepts that
you two teach the Flea Market Flippers, and also applying that to the vintage realm.
Rob: That's awesome. That's awesome. And that is a great point. And you guys, I mean, you have to go through that and you have to learn that about not getting attached to the item because I'm the same way. I find something that I really, really like, and I'm like, okay, this is awesome, but you can't get attached.
You have to look at the data, see what you can sell it for. If you can't find the comps, you have to have a good idea of what the retail is on that item to know, hey, I can probably get half of retail depending on condition. So that's really cool. That's cool that you guys are learning and working through that.
Melissa: That you have, when you go to the flea market, it's a little walk around, like he'll come back.
He'll think about it. He'll walk around the flea market and then decide, is it worth it to go back and get it? Is it, you know, so like the whole time you were playing with your head. Okay. It's cool. But is it really worth it? So, yeah. And that's another thing you said, you like your time now you're doing these higher profit items.
So cause you have to know that your time is valuable and not to say like making $20 on an item is still great. Like that's still great, but you do have to have kind of a profit. I wouldn't say a dollar or two, you can't live like that. You can't sell enough items to be making $5 profit all the time.
So you have to have that number in your head, wherever that is. Are you doing this part-time or full-time hours wise, would you say?
Jenny: I'd say it's probably still part-time. My husband really loves doing this. So this is so sourcing items is almost like a, it's like a hobby for him.
He does it during his lunch break and he does it after work. It's just, it kind of puts wind in his sails, so to speak it energizes him. So he probably spends maybe 10 hours a week doing that, and then maybe five hours a week, getting items ready or researching items. And then I, now that the kids are in school, last year our kids were virtual schooled. This year I have a bigger chunk of time to dedicate like exclusively to the business. So I probably am doing about five hours a day. And then some, and then weekends, we'll take the kids like to estate sales and things like that. So if you count like all the sourcing time, which for us, it's kind of like a hobby we might be, we might be close to 35 hours a week.
Okay. But that's probably on the high end and that is not 52 weeks a year.
Melissa: Yeah. And that's the sourcing is the fun part. We enjoy it, like we go to the flea markets and thrift stores and that's not the work part.
Rob: No, that's the fun part. Yeah. So that kind of leads into the next question. So you guys are working on average probably together around 35 hours.
What is your income averaging right now? Just the average, what are you guys making a month?
Melissa: We know it fluctuates usually.
Jenny: Yeah. Well I just finished taxes, so I actually have like, so last year we grossed $42,000. That was an average of about $4,000 a month. But keep in mind. I had just started. We had just started Flea Market Flippers.
We had never shipped freight. I had not done any sourcing, at the point when we had started. So at that time, when we had started, my husband was doing all the sourcing, so it was just vintage. And right now we're doing about half vintage, half typical flea market flip for items in terms of the amount of money that we're selling. His items have a wide range of value. Flea Market Flippers items tend to be the kind of the larger value items. So that's what we did last year. It's six weeks into the year and we have doubled we're over double of what we were at this point last year.
In fact, last week we had a day where we sold $3,000 worth of items in one day- four items, and it was over $3,000 and we were just like jumping for joy. It was just unbelievable.
Rob: So awesome. Yeah. That is amazing for sure. So, and that's, we started out as part-time. Doing the same thing, roughly $42,000 when we started keeping track of it.
So the sky's the limit. I'm so excited for you guys, your journey right now, and especially starting out the year strong, it's going to be so, so cool to watch your guys's journey for this next year.
Melissa: Do you have any, like most memorable, memorable flips in your head right now that you can think?
Jenny: Yeah, we have a lot of them. When it comes to like the items, my husband fixed he likes the more bizarre, the better. But one that kind of comes to mind is one of the first items that we ever sold. And, he had, my husband, I said he has like, when he gets excited about something, he is like all in, well, back when we first met, he was really excited about canoeing and he would whitewater canoe all over the place.
And so he is always, he has never really been able to pass up a canoe. Well, he called me and he's like, I just bought a canoe. What? How many canoes does one person need? Really like, and he's like, no, it was only $5. So he comes home and it wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting like a full-size canoe that we could actually use.
And it was a five foot model canoe of the traditional native American birchbark canoe, just like it would have been made back in the 1700s. And it was really cool. I looked at it and admired it. And it sat on our table for a long time. And then it went in the corner of the living room and we were really never sure what to do with it.
But my husband kept on thinking this thing is special. There was no glue on it. There were no nails or staples. It was made exactly like the Native Americans would have made it hundreds of years ago. But we didn't know what to do with it. So we stuck it on the shelf, in the basement. And from time to time, I would bring it up and I'm like, maybe we can sell it, you know, sell it locally because at the time we weren't on eBay, if we can make $50, he bought it for $5.
And my husband's like, no, this thing's special. We're not selling it for $50. Well, Fast forward to a couple months after we started following the two of you online, we joined your flip it for Christmas challenge. That was in the fall of 2019. And it was like, for those that don't know, it was just a free four week training to get, get people into flipping and to make a little money on the side.
And so we would, we joined the challenge, and the whole time during those trainings, you would talk about finding things. You already find things that you're not using. Look around the house. And I kept on coming back to this canoe and I'm like, I think we should sell it. And my husband would kind of went back and forth.
And also during the training, you would talk about shipping large items. So I'm like, okay, there's a way to do this. We're joining Flipper University. We're going to figure out how to do this. And so my husband finally agreed that we could sell it. So I did some research in here. This $5 canoe that had been sitting on the shelf in our basement was actually made in the 1960s by a man in Minnesota called Bill Hafeman.
And Bill became known one for his canoe making in the 1930s, he had learned about Native American canoes from the Ojibwe Indians and, and started making them during the Great Depression. And by the 1960s, he was like known for it. In fact, he presented one to president Lyndon Johnson and his wife, while Lyndon Johnson was president.
We found one of his canoes. We found out that one of his canoes was on display at the Smithsonian.
We were so excited. So we did some research. We found that, one of his canoes was going for about $6,000 at a gallery in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And we're like, so we just pick the price and we posted it on eBay. I think we asked maybe like $4,000. I can't quite remember every time we talked about posting it, the price went up by a thousand.
Like the more we would learn, like at first we kind of posted for a couple of hundred and then it went up to a thousand and it was like, the more we learned the price kept on going up. And so we posted it, we ended up selling it quick. I mean, we didn't think the market for five foot model Birch bark canoes would be very big, but it ended up selling for $2,300 within about three weeks. Wow. No, we were brand new to Flipper University and hadn't started a single module yet we had, we'd never shipped UPS, FedEx. We had only shipped through the postal service and we just had no idea what we were doing. And so, thankfully, right after we had joined, Rob, you probably remember this, but you were, you were calling the members that had recently joined and you called me and I mean, you know, being able to kind of pick your brain on how to ship this, because we didn't know what we were doing and you walked me through the steps, what items to buy, what boxes to buy, where to buy it. And it shipped perfectly and it took the stress out of it. It took the stress out of having to package this and ship it safely across the country.
It was great. It was, that was worth its weight in gold, right there.
Rob: A great story. And I do remember talking, I was actually at my friend's a scrap yard picking that day when I talked to you. So I specifically remember this, when you sold this canoe.
Melissa: I think it's so cool learning the history about some of these things.
It is really like that is one really awesome thing about our businesses is you preserve some of that history from stuff that gts in a scrapyard or it gets thrown away or gets, you know, people don't value it, but then you can find like, oh, like somebody really wanted that. And he was really well-known with it.
So it's pretty cool.
Rob: That's so exciting.
Melissa: I love it. So that's awesome. So for somebody starting out, like what is something that you've learned in your time that maybe you would pass along to somebody like a mistake you made that you learned from, or just something that piece of advice?
Rob: For sure.
Jenny: Piece of advice? I think a mistake would be don't be afraid to walk away from items. That's the mistake that I've made, where I've looked at an item, you know, on Facebook Marketplace, I think it's something different than what it is, or I think the condition is different than what it is. And then I get there and I realize, whoa, that is not fairly represented at all.
That's happened to me, with, it was a JennAir range, a vintage JennAir range. And I was told that it worked properly. Nothing was wrong with it, but the woman that was answering or the person that was answering the questions was very short with the answers. Just one word answers. And I thought, huh, surprised she's not like giving me more detail trying to sell it. I drove several hours to pick it up and it was covered in grease. And it was, and then I was talking to her husband and here they had never even tested it. That, the former owners said that the downdraft didn't work and it was missing pieces.
And like, and I had already put the time in to drive all the way there. And I should've just walked away. But I didn't, I took it home and then I just sat and it sat in our garage and I looked at it and I didn't feel comfortable selling it because I already knew part of it didn't work. And it was, it was in rough shape.
And, so. So that was ended up I probably could have parked it out and made some money and made my money back, but I just wanted to be done with it. So I posted it for free and I think a scrapper picked it up.
Rob: Yeah. That's a great advice for sure. And a lot of people don't realize once you even negotiate with somebody.
Before you go to pick up an item, you're not tied into that. You ultimately have the final say of am I going to hand over money for this item? Or if I'm not worth my time and it does feel weird, it feels weird to negotiate it and get there and be like, yeah, sorry, I can't take it. I've done it many, many times because it's a false representation of the item.
And don't be afraid to walk away. Absolutely not.
Absolutely not.
So great piece of advice. I absolutely love that for sure. So people need to realize that you are not stuck into anything. If it's not what you think it is, walk away. It's going to be better off for you to spend your time on finding another item and finding an item that you can flip quicker for whatever. Yep. So I love it. Yeah. Awesome. Cool.
Yeah. Any last piece of, well, that was a really good piece of advice that you would tell somebody that starting out though, too, like maybe, something that you overcame in your journey?
Jenny: It would be to, I think listen to others in the group, see what others are doing, and don't be afraid to try new things. There's a lot to learn in the group. And there is a lot to learn from the two of you. And, just think things that might sound intimidating to some people like shipping larger items or doing freight.
It's not very hard. And it's the group and the two of you through the modules and then just interactions. You try to eliminate as many barriers that people have to shipping items. And in this business in general. And so, it's just listen, watch and try to replicate as best as you can.
Rob: I love it. And for you guys that don't know, Jenny is talking about Flipper University. That's what we offer we put together and the group that she's talking about is Flipping For Profit. That's our private group, our private members group who go through Flipper University. It's an amazing place that we can all intertwine, we can talk to each other and learn from each other, find out what's selling.
Like Jenny's in Wisconsin. We're down here in Florida. She finds something really, really cool. We're in the group. She lets us know. We look for them canoes down here at the flea market all the time. That's what the group is about, learning that kind of stuff.
So that's it. That's awesome.
Melissa: I love that you get to do this with your husband too, and that he loves it. So he sounds pretty similar to this one.
Rob: So that's awesome, Jenny, thank you so much for jumping on here. It's been a pleasure speaking with you, getting some great tips on your journey. So thank you for doing this for our audience and from the bottom of our hearts. Yeah, for sure. So, you rock!
Jenny: Thanks for having me.